


mind's toy soldiers

by eraserheadbaby



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, War, mentioned child death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 12:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20242972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eraserheadbaby/pseuds/eraserheadbaby
Summary: And the children laugh, just like children ought to do.





	mind's toy soldiers

The children are laughing. A few of them form a circle, hand in hand as they go round and round. Another few are playing with their new toy. A2 watches them all from her hesitant corner, with the Pod hovering above her, like a metal halo.

With one draw of her sword, she could kill all the little machines.

It's not just what she could do, it's what she should do- that's the direction that life flowed. She's their enemy, they're her enemy. Killing machines is what she was made for, killing machines is all she did after that. It can't get any more natural - more automatic- than this.

But do the rules of life hold true here, in front of such an extraordinary image? 

Children aren't meant to be playing all carefree, while their enemy watches from the sidelines. Children are meant to be screaming and crying, terrified by the destruction all around them that they're unable to understand. They hide, crouching in dusty corners, wondering where their parents, brothers and sisters went. They leave behind the smallest corpses in the middle of the battlefield.

A2 has never been a child. She has never screamed, she has never cried, she has never hidden- she was always the one with a weapon in the hands. She has never lost a parent, or a brother- she has no one to lose. She has never died- and she never truly will.

So, there's two dimensions, the joyful machines in front of her, and the ones wailing in her head. And A2 is right in the middle, a stranger to both sides.

Is there truly no end to the purposelessness, the emptiness of an android? If she wanted to, could A2 experience a moment she could call a part of life- like childhood?

“Hey, Big Sis! Play with us!”

So annoying.

“Okay, okay... Just so you'll stop pestering me.”

And the children laugh, just like children ought to do.

**Author's Note:**

> i feel so lazy whenever i post such short stories...i feel like its an insult both to the readers and the fic writers that bust their asses writing entire epics...yet i still post them:/


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